1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a coin dispensing apparatus usually used in vending machines, coin exchangers, game machines or the like for dispensing coins or tokens in desired numbers one at a time.
2. Related Art Statement
Hitherto, such a coin feeder is well known as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Application Publication No. 63-49,793 and comprises a support plate inclined at an angle to the horizontal, a hopper supported on the support plate for storing coins to be dispensed in bulk and a coin transferring rotary disc disposed at one side in the hopper and rotatably supported on the inclined support plate. The rotary disc has at its central portion a central circular stage to define a coin transferring outer peripheral portion with a width larger than a diameter of a coin to be dispensed. On the outer peripheral portion of the rotary disc are extruded a plurality of coin transporting projections or pins spaced apart in the circumferential direction with a distance larger than the coin diameter such that when the rotary disc is rotated, the coins within the hopper are picked up and transported upward by the coin transporting pins and guided to an outlet chute by an outlet guide engaged with an upper peripheral of the central stage at an upper delivery portion of the coin dispensing apparatus. In the upper delivery portion, a counting roller of a coin counting switch is disposed so as to oppose to the outlet guide. Furthermore, the central stage is provided with a coin agitating member having a plurality of agitating arms extending radially from the center thereof.
One of means for improving a coin dispensation efficiency of the aforementioned type of coin dispensing apparatus is to agitate coins in the lower portion, in particular in the bottom portion of the hopper sufficiently to prevent coins from steadying at the potion so that coins are effectively picked up by all coin transporting projections provided at the outer peripheral portion of the coin transferring rotary disc.
In order to sufficiently agitate the coins, it is desirable to make a length and/or thickness of agitating arms radially extended from the center of an agitating member on the central circular stage of the rotary disc in great size capable of powerfully agitating coins in the bottom portion of the hopper. However, when the length in the radial direction and/or thickness of the agitating arms of the agitating member is great size, some problems are raised by the long and/or thick agitating arms in the upper delivery zone of the coin dispensing apparatus such that the tips or the agitating arms push coins toward the counting roll to cause counting error of the coin counting switch or carry two coins to the outlet chute at a time to clog a coin passage of the outlet chute.
Therefore, the length and thickness of the agitating arm have been limited and sequently the coins in the bottom portion of the hopper could not be sufficiently agitated by the agitating arms.